Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Captain Pike
A look at some of the most fascinating facts about Star Trek's first captain.
Transcript
00:00 Ah, Christopher Pike, the one who started it all, the first captain of the Enterprise.
00:06 That's if we don't count Robert April.
00:08 The first one on screen.
00:10 Well that's if we don't count the fact that the cage wasn't actually aired for quite a
00:14 few years after it was made.
00:16 Listen, that's not important right now because these are all things we might discuss in this
00:20 article.
00:21 With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture, and here are 10 things you didn't
00:26 know about Captain Pike.
00:29 Number 10, his horses.
00:31 In Equality of Mercy, the finale of the first season of Strange New Worlds, Pike encountered
00:35 his future self, who came to warn Pike not to prevent the injury that left him paralysed
00:40 and disfigured, in order to protect the future of the Federation.
00:43 To convince Pike that he was telling the truth, his counterpart told him about how their first
00:47 horse, the creatively named Sir Nasalot, broke his leg in a rainstorm and had to be put down
00:52 when Pike was a child.
00:53 Pike was heartbroken and cried for a week over his loss, but never told anyone, explaining
00:58 that it's hard to give a tragic backstory with such a silly name.
01:01 Earlier, we also saw Pike riding one of his horses in the snow near the start of the first
01:05 episode.
01:06 Something that you may not have noticed is that Pike's love of horses was actually a
01:09 small callback to the cage.
01:11 When the Talosians were trying to get him to fall in love with Veena, they created an
01:14 illusion of Pike's old home in Mojave, complete with his two beloved horses, Tango and Mary
01:20 Loon.
01:21 Number 9, his medal.
01:22 Pike was such an important figure in Starfleet's history that one of their most impressive
01:25 medals was named after him, the Christopher Pike Medal of Valour.
01:28 The medal was granted to officers "to recognise remarkable leadership, meritorious conduct
01:33 and acts of personal bravery".
01:34 Admiral Ross awarded this medal to Captain Sisko in the DS9 episode "Tears of the Prophets"
01:39 for retaking the station and fighting back against the Dominion.
01:42 Several episodes later, in "Take Me Out to the Holosuite", the Vulcan Captain Solok
01:45 bragged to Sisko that he had just received his second Christopher Pike medal.
01:49 The medal featured an image of Pike's face and a ribbon in the original series' red,
01:53 yellow and blue colour scheme, but unfortunately we didn't get a good shot of it in the show.
01:57 Still, it's cool that Pike was still being recognised for his service well into the 24th
02:01 century.
02:02 Number 8, his days in security.
02:04 After working as a test pilot straight out of the Academy, Pike had a brief career as
02:07 a security officer.
02:08 Near the beginning of the "Strange New Worlds" episode "Children of the Comet", Captain
02:12 Pike told his senior staff a story of one of his most embarrassing moments as a security
02:16 officer.
02:17 Apparently, Pike, still an ensign at the time, got into an altercation with a Nausican.
02:21 Somehow, during the fight, the Nausican ended up pantsless, and the young ensign Pike ran
02:25 after him, phaser in hand, only to trip and get caught on the Nausican's discarded pants,
02:30 allowing him to get away.
02:31 After the mishap, Pike's lieutenant pulled him aside and told him that security may not
02:34 be the best fit for him.
02:36 In the scene, he never mentioned whether or not he took his lieutenant's advice.
02:39 It's possible that Pike learned from this experience and remained in security for years
02:43 before serving as Robert April's first officer aboard the Enterprise.
02:47 Number 7, Veena's Pike illusion.
02:49 The story of the cage was retold almost exactly in the two-parter "The Menagerie", but
02:54 there was one detail that was changed, causing a bit of confusion among fans until recently.
02:58 At the end of the cage, there was a scene of Veena and Pike running off together and
03:01 holding hands.
03:02 In that episode, the Pike in that scene was meant to be an illusion of Pike, created by
03:07 the Telogians to keep Veena company after Pike and the Enterprise left.
03:11 In "The Menagerie", the same scene was used to show the real Pike running off with
03:15 Veena, his injuries cured by the Telogians' illusions.
03:18 In the Discovery episode "If Memory Serves", in between the cage and the menagerie, Veena
03:22 used the Telogians' powers to speak to Pike again, and finally cleared up some of the
03:26 confusion about what happened to the illusory Pike.
03:29 She explained to him that the Telogians allowed her to live a lifetime with the illusory Pike,
03:33 created from the part of him that lived on inside her mind, and told him how her relationship
03:37 with this reconstruction helped her stay sane and tethered to what she once felt.
03:42 Despite this, she always knew that he wasn't real, but the illusion of him was enough to
03:46 fight her loneliness until he returned in "The Menagerie".
03:49 Number 6 – The alternate Pike's differences
03:52 The version of Pike from the alternate Kelvin universe led the exact same life as the prime
03:56 Pike until the two timelines were split by the arrival of the Narada and the destruction
04:00 of the USS Kelvin.
04:01 This happened in 2233, around the time that he graduated from the Academy.
04:06 Because of the divergence, the alternate Pike wasn't paralysed by Delta radiation, though
04:10 he was confined to a wheelchair at the end of the 2009 film because of his torture at
04:14 the hands of Nero.
04:15 In the next film, "Into Darkness", he's still recovering from these injuries, but
04:18 is able to walk again with the help of a cane.
04:20 The alternate Pike was killed in Khan's attack on the Daystrom conference room, never
04:24 getting the chance to return to Veena on Talos IV.
04:26 In fact, it's possible that Veena and the rest of the crew of the SS Columbia never
04:30 crashed on Talos IV either, given that the crash happened in 2236 in the prime timeline,
04:35 three years after the timelines diverged.
04:38 Number 5 – Why he missed the Klingon War
04:40 When the Klingon War first began in 2256, two years after the Cage, Pike was leading
04:45 one of the Enterprise's five-year-long deep space exploration missions.
04:49 During the war, Starfleet ordered the Enterprise crew to continue their mission, which Pike
04:53 was not too pleased about.
04:54 He and the rest of the crew wanted to help defend the Federation, but command chose to
04:58 keep them away to use as a last resort.
05:00 They didn't want to risk losing some of their most talented officers until they had
05:05 no choice, but Discovery was fortunately able to end the conflict before the Enterprise
05:09 needed to get involved.
05:10 The Enterprise was also pretty far from Federation space at the time, seeing as the point of
05:14 their five-year mission was to chart unexplored space.
05:17 Even if they were ordered to help fight in the war, their journey would take months,
05:21 if not a year.
05:22 Number 4 – Meeting Kirk
05:24 Kirk and Pike were probably never particularly close.
05:27 In fact, Kirk wasn't even aware of Pike's Delta radiation poisoning until he met the
05:31 man again in the menagerie.
05:33 Near the beginning of that episode, Kirk mentioned that the first time he met Pike was when he
05:37 was promoted to Fleet Captain, a small detail that could give us an insight into the second
05:40 season of Strange New Worlds.
05:41 It's already been announced that Jim Kirk will become a recurring character in the second
05:45 season – an alternate reality version of him already popped up in the season one finale,
05:50 Quality of Mercy.
05:51 But there's no canon issues, since this feature never technically happened.
05:55 However, continuity problems arise if Pike isn't promoted to Fleet Captain before meeting
05:59 the Prime Kirk in season two.
06:01 If Kirk's remark from the menagerie was canon, then season two would show the promotion of
06:05 Pike to the rank of Fleet Captain before meeting Kirk, which may mean we'll get to see him
06:09 command an entire fleet of starships on some large-scale mission.
06:13 Number 3 – The Four Pikes
06:15 In the cage, and in the reused footage in the menagerie, Captain Pike was portrayed
06:19 by Geoffrey Hunter.
06:20 After the series was rejected, Hunter moved on to other projects, and by the time the
06:24 writers decided to bring Pike back, Hunter declined, and Sean Kenny was brought in to
06:28 portray the disfigured and retired Pike.
06:30 Kenny already looked strikingly similar to Hunter, and his heavy makeup was used to cover
06:34 any noticeable differences.
06:35 Decades later, we got to see an alternate version of Pike in the rebooted Kelvin timeline,
06:39 portrayed by Bruce Greenwood.
06:40 This version was able to avoid his fate from the Prime timeline, but ended up dying anyway
06:44 way sooner at the hands of Khan, as we discussed earlier.
06:47 Lastly, Anson Mount joins the cast of Discovery's second season as the Prime Captain Pike in
06:52 between the episodes The Cage and The Menagerie.
06:54 Mount turned Pike into one of Starfleet's kindest and most compassionate officers, a
06:58 welcome change from Captain Lorca from season one.
07:01 Immediately after taking command of Discovery, Pike made it clear that he was a different
07:04 kind of leader by cracking jokes with the senior staff and learning all of their names.
07:08 The fans loved Mount's Pike and the other returning characters from The Cage, and it
07:12 was actually one of the main reasons why Strange New Worlds was greenlit.
07:15 Number 2.
07:16 The Military Pike Code.
07:18 In an interview with Star Trek.com, Sean Kenny, who played the wheelchair-bound Pike in The
07:22 Menagerie, was asked about his experiences meeting the fans when he dropped a really
07:25 interesting fun fact about Pike's legacy in the real world.
07:28 According to Kenny, a couple of F-16 military pilots once told him that they had a secret
07:32 Captain Pike code that they used when flying over Iraq.
07:35 They explained, "All we say is that a one-beep or a two-beep roger?
07:39 A question that only a real Trekkie would know how to answer."
07:42 It's really amazing that Kenny's portrayal of Pike was able to become so iconic, despite
07:46 not having any lines of dialogue in the entire episode he appeared in.
07:50 It's not known how widely used this Captain Pike code was in the US military, but it's
07:55 fascinating that it was used at all.
07:57 Number 1.
07:58 Pike's Discovery Pin.
07:59 Most of Star Trek Discovery's second season was classified by Starfleet Command after
08:02 the crew travelled to the future to prevent the destruction of the Federation.
08:06 Because of this, Pike was rarely given a chance to remember the friends he made while briefly
08:09 commanding Discovery.
08:11 One way that he kept the knowledge of Discovery's crew alive was by wearing a pin dedicated
08:14 to them on Starfleet Remembrance Day in the Strange New Worlds episode "Memento Mori."
08:19 The official report stated that Discovery was destroyed, along with its entire crew.
08:22 While Pike was aware that they probably continued to live on in the future, he was ordered to
08:26 never disclose the true story, so this pin was his only way of paying his respects to
08:30 Discovery publicly.
08:32 Interestingly, every character in this episode wore a remembrance pin for a different ship.
08:36 Spocks was dedicated to the USS Congo, Chief Kyle's honoured the USS Shenzhou, and La
08:40 Anne's pin named the SS Puget Sound, the ship that she was aboard as a child when the
08:45 Gorn killed her family.
08:46 That's everything for our list today, folks!
08:48 If you think we missed anything, let us know in the comments below.
08:50 Don't forget you can get in touch with us over on Twitter @TrekCulture or over on Instagram
08:54 @TrekCultureYT.
08:55 You can catch myself @SeanFerric on Twitter or @Sean.Ferric88 on Instagram or @SeanFerric
09:01 on Hive.
09:02 Thank you very much everyone, you are all awesome, make sure that you look after yourselves
09:05 until I'm talking to you again, make sure you live long and prosper, have a wonderful
09:08 day, and make it so.
09:10 [Music]
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09:11 (upbeat music)
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